Inlägg taggade: Creative Navy

I thought I’d let you in on why I have no time for updating the blog anymore by showing you what I’m doing instead. I think I mentioned it before but I’m pursuing a master’s degree in theatre at the Malmö Theatre Academy. That basically means I’m doing a bunch of projects and reflecting upon how they interact with my creative practice.

Next week, November 12th, I’m participating in the festival Transistor 2 here in Malmö with a play called ”Glamour”. Script by me, direction by Amanda Linnea Ginman and actors are Lukas Orwin, Katja Lobas and Camila Bejarano Wahlgren. If you’re in the Malmö area – hit me up and I’ll put you on the list to guarantee you a seat (it’s all for free)!

Then, November 16-17, my monologue ”Jag ville vara Britney, Whitney & JLo” goes up on Potato Potato’s stage at Rolfsgatan 5. I’ve taken it upon myself to learn about light and sound and set design and it turned out to be way more complicated than I first imagine. But after a few weeks of doubt I’m super happy about the result! This is all made on a 5000kr ($560) budget and a DIY-with-no-knowledge-kind-of-thing and considering that I’m so proud of what I’ve done. Also, I’ve managed to learn a little bit about programming and light design in the process. My ambition was to be more independent and not have to rely so much on technicians in the future and I think I’ve taken a big step towards that. Now I just want to learn more and more and it has everything to do with witnessing the Anti World Tour this summer.

Since the Malmö show I’ve been googling Rih’s set designer and creative director Willo Perron and lost myself in the dramaturgy and design of big arena shows. It’s by no means what I’m doing at school but that kind of larger than life room/space designed to make each and every person feel close to the person/act on stage is worth learning more about.

Writing this now I realize there’s a lot of stuff I’ve carried with me from the AWT into this project.

Rihanna during one of the sets of the Anti World Tour. Creative Direction: Willo Perron, Scenic Design: Willo Perron, Lighting: Jesse Blevins.
Rih won’t be on the bathtub during the performance but I couldn’t resist having a little Kiss it better moment after rehearsals.

The ceiling piece from AWT also stuck with me and became inspiration for a floor reflecting light, stage, movements and people.

In my research on Willo Perron I also started reading about the creative process behind the ANTI diaRY. My monologue takes place in a bathroom which is the reason for the bathtub being center stage, but I can’t deny this image has been with me, somehow, too.

Oh and by the way, for those of you who didn’t entirely get the story behind ANTIdiaRY (like me), here’s what the idea behind it was:

”ANTIdiaRY is a cryptic digital journey into the life of Rihanna in which the artist’s memories unfold in a series of eight episodes. Each episode correlates with an album release and represents a turning point in Rihanna’s life.”
– from WilloPerron.com.

You know how sometimes you just have to feel closer to Rihanna? So you put on her music or attitude or merch from a tour or socks from a collaboration or open a magazine or just spend hours talking to your friends about her? That happened to Ziggi Willpower and I today so we dressed up in Fenty gear, grabbed THAT issue of V Magazine and aimed for the rooftop. You’re welcome.

We talked to Juan Sebastián Peláez, the artist behind the giant RiRi in Berlin, to get to know him and his work a little better. Happy reading!

Hi Juan! Congrats on the success with Ewaipanoma (Rihanna) at the Berlin Biennale! Can you tell us a little more about yourself and the piece?

Hi! I’m an artist currently based in Bogotá, Colombia. The piece was made for the Berlin Biennale. It’s about a myth of a monster that was supposed to have lived in the Americas long ago. When Christopher Columbus did his first voyage to the Americas he wrote on his logs that the ”ewaipanoma” people lived there, headless humanoid people. They made engravings that were later shown around Europe about how Americans looked like.

How did you develop that into the piece we can see at Berlin Biennale?

For this piece I got a series of pop icons that were born in the same places where they first traveled and did the process of making them look like they were supposed to have been 500 something years ago.

There’s millions of pictures of Rihanna to choose from, how did you decide on which one to use?

I wanted one that was full figure cause it was gonna be a cutout. I didn’t want it to have like a cut side, you know what I mean? And I wanted to have visible tattoos to make her visible. So after trying a bunch of options we chose that one. But I made at least 8 more Riris.

What happened to the other Riris? Where are they?

In my computer <3

Since this is a Rihanna blog, I have to ask: are you a Rihanna fan?

Of course!

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us Juan! We love giant RiRi!

Ewaipanoma (Rihanna) can be seen at the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art from June 4 ‘til September 18.

With two videos out and one on the way I thought I’d share with you how I saw and felt the songs when they first were released. This is a common thing for fans to do, elaborating and developing their own creative material based on their fave’s work. Fanfiction, basically, even if that’s normally performed in the written form. But if you see it as made up fantasies of what might have happened, or could happen, in regards of your idol or the characters in your favorite book I’d say this fits right in.

These are my fantasies of what the songs off of ANTI look like. I will try to put down a little explanation too, but you’ll have to keep an open mind cause explaining an abstract feeling is pretty much impossible.

Consideration became an immediate favorite for me. I love how quirky it is (for a Rihanna tune) and that she brought SZA on the album. I basically just see a bunch of limbs in front of me, moving, bending and escaping from whatever it is they’re attached to (body, movement, structure, others).

I needed ANTI to understand James Joint. It was together with the other songs, as a whole, that it hit me what an amazing and soothing track this is. I was once into learning how to lucid dream. James Joint makes me want to start trying again.

Well, ok. My first edit was a compilation of Amber Rose and Blac Chyna twerking masterfully, but that seemed a little too obvious for Work so I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and waited. Suddenly a bunch of flexed muscles appeared and thus… ^

To be honest I wasn’t feeling Woo at first. I thought it was misplaced and didn’t understand why she choose to include it on the album. So when I started looking for footage to go with it, I was lost. Until the avalanche came. And hit me. And the song hit me. And I realized it’s just a giant slap in the face. It’s a damn force that run you over, take you over, destroy you, transform you and all you can do is let it. I now LOVE Woo.

A friend of mine had just experienced her first BDSM party and was telling me about that at the time of me making this video, so that might have affected the outcome… But yeah, I see a person who just found something new and exciting at the same time as her inner voice is opposing with a bunch of annoying questions of wether or not this new thing is healthy or just another form of a path already taken, the Same ol’ mistakes. At the end it doesn’t matter though cause it feels good. So good.

Bring your tissues cause Never ending is here. In my mind, this is about aging. In a very heart breaking kind of way. Losing your memory, losing control of your body, losing the ability to move, to interact…

”I can’t feel my body now
I’m separate from here and now”

”A lost connection, oh come back to me
So I can feel alive again
A soul and body try to mend”

”Ghost in the mirror
I knew your face once, but now it’s unclear”

Just imagine wishing to hold on longer, knowing it’s not far left. Wanting to fall in love one last time. Gah, it breaks my heart.

I really wanted to have Amy Winehouse and only Amy Winehouse but couldn’t pull it off and thus dislike the result. Higher deserves better, but yeah, black and white, feeeeeelings and one too many texts.

Confident, sexy, in demand. An image of Rihanna would have been enough because Sex with me is so much her, but I wanted to add Halle Berry, Tasha Jefferson, Beyoncé, Emma Pillsbury and Marlene Dietrich too.